January 6, 2011

Happy Epiphany, everyone! It’s the official last day of the 2010 Christmas season, which in practice mostly just means that tomorrow it’s time to take down the decorations and for me to put my Santa Claus pin away until Thanksgiving. Always sad. But, contrary to my perhaps unsatisfactory posting frequency when it isn’t December, Sure, Why Not? is still here to celebrate the win, the fail, and the lulz.

Now let’s talk about the sexualization of infants…

Is anyone else really creeped out by ads on TV and elsewhere for skin products that seem to place a lot of emphasis on the smoothness of a baby’s skin? There’s that Johnson & Johnson baby oil ad that’s been on a few times where throughout the entire thing, some woman is downright fondling a little baby. It starts off with her kissing him on the lips, and throughout she also kisses his feet and rubs his baby-smooth stomach and arms and face. Why? Because he’s a little baby that makes his skin so smooth and fun to touch and rub! Oh joy!

Also creepy are ads for women’s skin products that at some point show a baby or toddler to point out that this cream will make your skin feel all smooth like theirs! Use this skin cream and your skin will be so soft you’ll feel like a baby! A sexy baby. Or a baby-like woman. Textural attractiveness means your features feeling like you spent most of the past year in a womb, be it the smooth baby skin as dictated by skin creams and moisturizers or soft baby hair as sung by Hall & Oates (though they at least think the eyes should be a woman’s).

Of course, the infantilization of women isn’t exactly new and is something feminists have been battling in several forms for about as long as there have been feminists!

Hey, I’m not saying anything against smooth skin. That’s fine. But when extolling how attractive and hot and sexy smooth soft skin and other features are, think you could, you know, leave the little kids out of that one? We really shouldn’t be encouraging people to find their features attractive and definitely not to feel them up!

And can we get rid of the phrase “smooth as a baby’s behind”? You’re talking about someone’s ass, for God’s sake!

*takes down lights, takes off pin*

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December 12, 2010

Jesus Christ, am I sick of everywhere I look, mostly online but also some offline, there’s the exact same stale attacks on the popular Stephenie Meyer book series “Twilight”. I used to read most of the Cheezburger sites on a daily basis, but stopped because it seemed like every damn thing on any of the sites was something whose entire humor seemed to be that it was mocking Twilight or Justin Bieber. Honestly, it’s fine once in a while, but all the damn time? There’s other shit in the world, you know!

“Oh noes, why is Bella so attracted to Edward when he’s totally stalking her? That’s not a healthy relationship!”

“Haha, for Bella it’s a choice between a dead guy who’s 100 years older than her or a werewolf.”

“Oh, God, it’s sooo poorly written!”

I actually did read Twilight recently. It didn’t exactly blow me away, nor really keep me hooked, but I didn’t find it anywhere near deserving of the venom it gets all the time. True, I haven’t read the other three books yet, so we’ll see how I feel then.(more…)

September 29, 2010

You know how annoying it is for people to decide for you which religious (or any other for that matter) box you fit in? Especially when it is contrary to what you have explicitly stated?

Some people fit in the neat little box of Christian, Jew, Muslim, Atheist, whatever. But not everybody does, in fact I’m certain most people don’t. And that’s where people get confused.

While I don’t really consider myself non-Christian, lately I’ve been going by Secular Theist. When asked what that means, I say “I believe God exists but I don’t believe in doing anything about it.”

And people totally just nod and say that’s cool…

Oh, wait, no they don’t. They instead insist I’m really agnostic. 🙄

Fuck you, I’m not agnostic. I do believe God exists. Agnostics believe there’s no way to know and may or may not lean either way. I do know God exists.

Or then I get called a Deist. No, I’m not damn Deist, either. Deists believe God created the universe. I do not believe God had anything to do with that. So, no, not a Deist.

Then they get really confused that I don’t believe in a Creator. So that must mean I’m really an Atheist!

No! I’m not an Atheist. What did I just say? I DO believe in God. Just because I may agree with most atheists when it comes to religious fundamentalism run amok, such as the God in School entry a few days ago, doesn’t mean I’m an atheist myself. Just because my belief in God doesn’t take the same form as that of most other theists, doesn’t mean I’m not still a theist.

Or then I get the “oh, you just THINK you aren’t an atheist but you totally are, lulz!” Funny, if I were an atheist, wouldn’t I then be smart enough to be able to have a better idea of my own religious identity than YOU? That must mean I’m either a stupid atheist or an intelligent theist. Can that idea sink into your mind? LOL PARADOX!

Or can you try the idea of not assigning useless labels to people based on what specific ideologies they may have? Or is that too hard?

July 12, 2010

“The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” is really really true!

Alright, everyone, time for a little life advice from the Fortress!

A year ago yesterday, I was walking around my neighborhood, when I passed a man walking his small white dog, when for no reason the stupid dog bit me on the back of my thigh. Ouch! Man didn’t seem to give a shit, and I forgot to get his name or info. So, as I mentioned briefly in last year’s 100 Days of Summer recap, I spent the following week in absolute panic that the dog had given me rabies or something. Yeah, I know, stupid thing to be panicked about, despite everyone and all information I looked up essentially telling me how there was like no chance. Only got out of the panic a week later when I saw the dog being walked again (rabid dogs are dead within a couple of days of symptoms, the only time they can spread it, so this dog had to of course be alright). Didn’t snap out of the panic right away. It took me another couple days to slowly come down from it.

And that week was seriously miserable. Regardless of it being for a stupid reason, I was still panicked, still absolutely filled with fear. And let me tell you something. Fear seriously fucks you UP. You can’t think. You lose your marbles. No amount of logical reasoning showing you not to be scared will snap you out of it. Pretty much just has to go away on its own after a while. Anything I had been thinking about or planning up until that asshole little dog bit me had gone out of my mind. Pretty much all I could think about was this dog bite and my irrational fear of infection.

And that’s why fear itself is a worthwhile thing to be afraid of! I sometimes find there are events or possible events in the future that I think “oh, wow, I’m going to be soooo scared!” For example, if I ever get pregnant. Pregnancy is pretty goddamn scary. Aside from all the crazy shit involved with it even when it’s perfectly normal, if I’m ever pregnant, I would be soooooo terrified! Scared waiting to find out if pregnant. Scared during labor. Scared waiting for labor at any moment. And then of course the most terrifying thing of all for which pregnancy is just the opening, parenthood! Ack!

So I would say, well, don’t be scared, but it can’t be helped. That’s another reason to fear it, since it’s hard to avoid. Education may help, in that fear preys on ignorance, since not knowing what to do in a given situation only increases the fear, while knowing what to do keeps it somewhat at bay, usually.

And your brain is on your side anyway. It gets bored with fear after a while, provided the fear brings nothing new to be fearful about, and logical reasoning grows back. So while you can’t avoid being fearful, because, well, shit happens, you can at least be ready for it and knock it out quickly. Or at least manage until it passes.

Happy Fifty-Fifty! 🙂

This has been Day 50 of the 100 Days of Summer, Round 10.

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May 20, 2010

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve gone over to someone’s house, and been expected and invited, and when either I asked if they had anything to drink or they offered something to drink, and I asked what they had, they replied, “Milk. Water.”

*facepalm*

So, in other words, you don’t have anything. Who the hell goes to someone’s house to drink fucking MILK? Water might be okay, even though they’re usually just talking about unfiltered tap water.

It’s one thing if I’m just one guest, or one of two or three. But I’ve seen this even when someone is hosting a good sized gathering at their house, and there isn’t shit to drink besides those two non-options. And probably didn’t bother to tell the guests beforehand to bring their own drinks.

Maaaybe there might be juice. Depends what kind of juice. But that’s at least something. It actually has flavor. Same with iced tea, so long as it’s actually sweetened.

Or sometimes they might have juices, sodas, etc. Except they didn’t bother to put any of it in the refrigerator beforehand, so it’s all warm! Lame!

I don’t mean to sound like as a guest to someone’s house that means I’m entitled to them having stuff I like. Yet if I brought my own drinks without being invited to do so, could be seen as rude. *shrug*

Of course, got to wonder, is milk and water all they drink? Or did they just happen to run out of real drinks right before having guests over? Or is this a common case of hosting fail?

Now, if you don’t mind, I’m thirsty, and am going to get some orange juice. The kind fortified with calcium so I don’t have to drink milk! 🙂

December 26, 2009

Caring about someone does NOT give you the right to be controlling, obsessive, or insulting.

Let’s say your mom calls you when you’re heading out of town or something. She calls again a few hours later. Again the next day, about three times. And again. And again. Oh, and let’s say you finally call her on it, telling her she does not need to be calling you constantly. What is her reply?… “Aww, but I just worry about you, because I care about you.”

And that’s just a mild example, what with all the controlling things parents are advised to do with their teens that make prison look like a haven of privacy rights. Why are parents so disrespectful of privacy and insulting to intelligence? Because they care. And because they care, they have free rein to do whatever they want, and you should be grateful for it, because they care.

Bitch please! Yes, you CAN care about someone without constantly worrying they’re about to fall off a cliff or get eaten by a rabbit or something. Are you so messed up in your perception of love that you don’t realize that? Are we all expected to be so starved for love and affection and consideration that we’ll sacrifice our dignity and comfort for it at every conceivable opportunity?

Or, here’s a crazy thought. How about both caring for someone AND respecting them at the same time? *gasp, fall down* What a concept!

A few years back, my sister didn’t come home that much, constantly out with friends and whatnot. My dad was always so worried, but I wasn’t. When I mentioned this, he told me I must not care all that much about her and that I must want bad things to happen. I said that’s not true at all, that I of course care about her but at the same time respect that she can take care of herself. He insisted that was impossible. Moron.

Oh, but it’s okay to be obsessive, to call 10 times a day, to not let someone do something on their own because if you do it they won’t get hurt, to belittle someone for their beliefs because in your measly organ you call a brain those beliefs are somehow dangerous or make this person unfulfilled… because you CARE. And that’s carte blanche to just take control of everything about this person.

You just didn’t account for the fact that this person cares for her own self way too much to let the likes of you stick your ass into her business. So fuck off.

December 12, 2009

I might want to throw Greeks and Italians into that mix, too, for a lot of this.

Last night was the first night of Chanukah, and I can guarantee all our Jewish friends were up late and stuffed themselves with lots of delicious food. And they’ll do the same tonight. And tomorrow night. Eating and celebrating, running late into the night, with lots and lots of people.(more…)

December 1, 2009

What a surprise after reading the title. Anyway, on this first of the 2009 December “blogathon” right here on Sure, Why Not?, I want to blast those idiots who are under the impression that being unfamiliar with certain knowledge or technology somehow makes them superior.

It’s yet another issue that adults always blame teens for doing while in reality the adults are way worse about it. The stereotype is that teens don’t want to admit to their friends that they know about history or that they have good grades or what have you. Yeah, right, five minutes on NYRA’s forums will kill that mindset quite nicely.

In the case of adults, it is often in the form of their pride in being luddites. They often say “ooh, I don’t know anything about Facebook, hahaha” as if it’s amusing and at least they’re not among the inferior beings that do have the extra knowledge of what Facebook is. Replace Facebook with Twitter, YouTube, or any other similar site, and the responses are the same. Because, despite the fact that all of these sites are being used more and more by older crowds, those older crowds usually avoid admitting it, or passing it off as being necessary for work or in order to appeal to younger people for a business or something lame. You know, because, gasp!, how could a mature adult use a tool that is supposed to be aimed at young people?! You’re all growed up so you don’t use things those little (read: under 30) people use. Don’t you feel special?

And at times when I inform the proudly ignorant adult of the benefits of social networking, no matter how well I point out the helpfulness of it for whatever issues they’re having or ways they’d like to make things easier, I’m met with denial or indifference. Because Twitter could spit gold out of the monitor and they would still refuse to try to learn it for fear of being uncool in the adult realm.

Of course, this is hardly limited to websites or technology in general. Some of this I’ll rant on separately later (hey, I’ve got 30 more consecutive days to fill here!).

June 8, 2009

Seriously. I mean, I could sort of see maybe back in the 1980’s and 90’s this might have been a sort of “ooh, in the future, in 1999, we’re going to party so hard because that’s the last one before the numbers change, lulz!” Very stupid, but I can at least kind of see it.

If you’ll take a moment, please consult your nearest calendar for the current year. Or just look at the date on top of this entry. What year is that? Wow, really? Is it really 2009?

Oh noes! You missed teh big party year! It’s been a full decade since then!

Or, maybe, you didn’t do anything special in 1999 but want to pretend you did or that 1999 will somehow come again so you’ll have another chance. Either way, using the phrase whether before or after that year makes you sound like an immense douchebag, albeit in different ways.

Though not as much as if said during 1999…

“Duuude, we’re going to party like it’s 1999!”
“Hey, look at the calendar, man. It IS 1999!”
“OMG, holy shit! I guess we’d better party then.”
“Cool, dude! Hey, got any weed?”
“Nah, man, got a new job, have to take a piss test.”
“Totally bogus! I’d be in all kinds of deep shit if I had to for my job.”
“Hey, it’s alright. Here, want some coffee?”
“Sure, thanks man! So what should we do now?”
“I don’t know. Find the guys and see what they’re up to.”
“Awesome! Tonight is going to kick ass. Hell yeah!”
“Duuude, we’re going to party like it’s 1999!”
“Hey, look at the calendar, man. It IS 1999!”

Yes, that is how you sound if you say this phrase. Seriously.

The mystery is gone, folks. We’re past 1999. The nineties have ended and we’re almost done with the aughts. If you’re planning on partying, just do it whenever since you’re just getting older and older and it’s incredibly wasteful and silly to be earmarking an arbitrary year for “partying hard”. Just go ahead and guzzle that entire beer keg, blow up your liver in the process, die, and be out of our hair, kthx.

I swear, I want to break something and stab the nearest kitten in the eyes whenever an anti-drug ad comes on TV. Especially that particularly bad one they’ve been running that’s apparently about a boy watching his sister smoke pot in her room and the sight somehow traumatizing him and the ad somehow implying the pot is harming him just as much as her… What?! I haven’t the slightest idea what it’s supposed to mean, if anything. I’m quite sure the sole purpose is to make people whose IQ’s are above 50 want to take a few hits off a bong to ease the pain of the sheer stupidity, just so the Office of National Drug Control Policy can be like “oh noes, so many more people are smoking pot, pot will KILL YOU!!!11!”(more…)

December 21, 2008

It’s a sort of “common knowledge” tidbit about the Bible that gets circulated around. Everyone is all like “ooh, Mary Magdalene was a hooker and then she found Jesus and was changed.” It gets believed she was the woman they were throwing stones at when Jesus made his famous declaration that only he who is without sin may cast the first stone at her.

But if you actually read the passage in the Bible (it’s in Luke somewhere), you see the woman there is not named.

So where are you people getting this?

I mean, it makes for a bit of an inspiring little story that even this unclean whore could still rise up to being one of Jesus’s disciples, in an unofficial sense. Or his wife depending on who you ask. But that is just not what’s in the story, whether the canon gospels or the lost ones.

Hell, isn’t there enough made up shit in scripture as it is? Must we add to it?

December 16, 2008

If I’m trying to make a left turn and am on the median waiting for cars to go by so I can make the turn, and you’re behind me, stay behind me before you cross the first part of the road until I move, and then you can come to the median!

Did that make any sense?

Seriously, I’m trying to make a left turn, and the car behind me wants to make a left turn as well. When the cars heading to my right have gone by, I drive forward to the little break in the median and wait there so I can make my left turn.(more…)

July 7, 2008

Without exception, without fail. Or no, very much with fail. This song is way overplayed. Some loser with a guitar who got fortunate enough for some Saturday night bar gig where he’ll spend the evening badly covering various popular songs will soon enough stumble upon this Jimmy Buffett ballad.

People eat it up, as they often do with the most tiresome, clichè acts. “ZOMG, awesome, he’s playing Margaritaville while we’re in a bar, he’s liek sooo kewl!”

What other gems shall we hear? “Closing Time” perhaps? Maybe even “Tub Thumpin'”. Or, perhaps not, those are too recent. Still bar songs. Even if played, not the least bit creative, but with Margaritaville, shit, song’s old so everybody knows it and you don’t piss off the older bar goers who want to pretend the year 1980 has not yet come.

All I wanted was to go to a restaurant on some evening, but in the restaurant’s bar they have some dumb live band or whatever. Margaritaville will be played. That train is never late. I mean, the song stops being clever after the second or third time you hear it, if it ever was. Playing it over and over just speeds up the brain damage the bar people are already on the verge of with their copious alcohol consumption. Ugh.

(Speaking of stupidity, prepare yourself for like 500 comments all saying “ZOMG, finally, a new entry!”)

April 4, 2008

Holy crap, I haven’t written an entry in a while! Oh, well, here’s a new one. Be happy.

You know what pisses me off? Sometimes there’s a program on your computer that for some reason or another needs to go to a webpage. Perhaps to download an upgrade. Whatever.

Oh, did I mention you already had your browser open because you were in the middle of reading a page on the Fortress and admiring its awesomeness? Yeah.

So you click the link in the program to bring up a browser window with the page it must visit. But you see no new browser window. You are confused.

And then you realize.

The stupid program made the page open IN THE BROWSER WINDOW YOU ALREADY HAD OPEN! :doitnow:

What the shit?!

What the hell is the purpose of that?! No, don’t open in a new window in a nice unobtrusive way, a way that doesn’t interrupt anything you might already have going. Just move the page you’re already on into the other page.

January 27, 2008

So what’s my problem with him? He’s a Republican? Don’t care about that. He’s a Mormon? REALLY don’t care about that. He’s against medical marijuana? Pfft, not a priority for me. So what’s so wrong with him?

The man who has been his biggest fundraiser until recently? Robert Lichfield. Do you know who that is? Go to a search engine and look up the name, and see what you find. If you don’t feel like doing that, then he’s the man in charge of an organization called WWASPS, which is a collection of many “schools” and “camps” around the country where “troubled” teens are sent to be straightened out.(more…)

December 19, 2007

I’ve been thinking about the issue of school uniforms earlier. Then I realized something. What kind of perverted jackass supports them? You hear the same old excuses they pull out of their asses about wanting students to be more equal, so the poor kids wouldn’t feel like they have shabby clothes while the rich kids have nice expensive clothes. That’s about all they come up with and they convince themselves over and over that it is a bullet proof argument, despite the very many factual errors. Such as schools with uniforms typically requiring uniform fees, for one.

No, they support it because they enjoy the idea of young kids being dressed in clothes they like to see them in. You just know these perverted old assholes are getting off at the thought of ten-year-old school girls in a little plaid skirt. They believe children are not people, but little beings for them to control for their own personal pleasure. So what do they do? They want to dress up the little “dolls” for their own gratification, in little outfits of their choosing.

Funny how the people most vocal about perverts on the internet will wholeheartedly support school uniforms. Talk about missing an obvious haven of pedophiles. Then again, protecting children in that sense is hardly their biggest priority.

And you people think those in charge really see children as innocent beings. You are quite fooled.

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December 5, 2007

You might recall I wrote a rant nearly three years ago essentially stating that Snow Rules. I love snow. I always have. Yet everyone thinks I’m crazy because they hate snow because it is an inconvenience.(more…)

November 23, 2007

Seriously. Why are you shopping? This is the day notorious for being the busiest shopping day of the year, mostly because the stores have collectively made it that way because the crowds arouse them. Can’t just have a sale last all through Christmas time. Have to squeeze it into the wee morning hours of the day after Thanksgiving, so some people can get trampled because they’ve been stirred up into a frenzy like the mindless cretins they are.

Stay home. Nothing is that important. What’s really odd are the ones who actually do go to the store at 4am or something. Screw that. Stay home and sleep. How much of a dumb redneck are you that you must be sitting outside Wal-Mart in the freezing cold in the middle of the night, waiting for it to open so you can buy shit for your redneck family and friends?

Then again, maybe this is overhyped. Stores might not be quite as bad as they say, but I’m avoiding them nonetheless. They also say stores are horribly mobbed the few days before Christmas, but I used to do all my shopping between December 20 to 24, and I always did quite well. Crowds weren’t terrible. So maybe this is the same, that only the media and conventional knowledge are trying to make it look like a disaster, way worse than it is.

And people wonder why so many unfortunate souls have lost any Christmas cheer. All this forced stress. It’ll kill anything.

What’s Five Alive? It’s a kind of juice, under the Coca-Cola umbrella. It’s delicious. It used to be around a lot in the United States back when I was little. In concentrate form, anyway. I liked it. Then didn’t have it any more for a while. Stopped selling it I guess.(more…)